


The Wilds,

by Oxygen



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: kids in the mountains being kids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-11
Updated: 2018-10-11
Packaged: 2019-07-29 09:12:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16261142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oxygen/pseuds/Oxygen
Summary: and some encroaching cities or windpipes wrapping and tangling around a house.Freeform idea about some of the Halloween Terror crew knowing eachother as kids and living in the Wilds.





	The Wilds,

The wilderness was no place for kids. But these were the Wilds, where their parents farmed mushrooms and tended to their herb gardens. The Wilds were where they let the family cat roam through and where ventured into to chop wood for the winter.

This was their last hope, as the towns around them grew, their limits surrounding them and choking them until there was no greenery left. The Outside left no place for farmers from the Wilds with bright young children who couldn’t make the trek to the town center for their first years of schooling. The Outside had no heart for farmers who wouldn’t sell a swath of their land for a measly loaf of bread each month.

 

The bread didn’t even taste good! What a terrible lunch. Jamison shoves the slice back in his satchel. The stitches are coming undone, so he takes out a sewing kit his grandmother gave him.

“Look!” Satya raises up a figure, made out of sticks. She’s fashioning a little house for it out of the weeds they pulled from Jamison’s family garden. It’s incredible how much skill and dedication she has for making anything out of some sticks and old leaves.

 

“Can you teach me how to make one? Please? Please? Pretty please?” Gabriel and Angela crowd around Satya, excited and maybe a little too loud for her. They tone down a little and let the master get to work, nimble hands crafting and weaving and summoning at a deliberately slow pace for her students.

 

He finishes mending the satchel, so he puts the bone needles back in the sewing kit. It’s some metal, probably tin. He’s heard about it from an aunt. The little box is from the Outside, definitely, with its strange painted on colors, red and white and something else that used to be bright, that have all begun to wear away.

When he puts the sewing kit back in, his hands brush against flowers. They’re beginning to dry, but the whites and yellows and blues are still vibrant. He grabs a handful, and goes over to the group.

 

He places them on the little buildings they’re making. Someone around here needs to have a good eye for style, after all.

 

-

 

“I know there’s no reason for this,” Jamison begins. Gabriel looks at him as they walk to school.

“I know we’ve seen bugs crawl into our bed through the windows, and seen toads and cobwebs watch us in the outhouse. But this is different.”

Jamison’s throat begins folding into itself, can feel the looming heavy and painful mess.

 

Gabriel picks up where he left off, because he knows they both need to get something off of their chests. 

“I hate how cold and dirty this street is. The horses smell weird. The people smell weird. We smell weird now. I hate it when bugs and dust and grime and rats collect in the corner of my wet, cold house. I hate Sister Gemma for giving out ridiculously hard mathematics homework. I hate the kids for making fun of our accent. I hate the kids for making fun of Satya and Angela for building model bridges and playing in the dirt outside of the school. I hate it when they tell their parents the kids from the Wilds hit them and boo hoo what big brutes they all are for giving them what they deserve. I hate everything about this place.”

 

They walk in silence, tense, not at eachother, but with each other.

It’s a while before Jamison speaks up again. “Not everything. You don’t hate that cute mouse we saw in the dining hall.”

That relieves the tension. “Oh yeah!” Gabriel grins. “I wish you guys would have been there to see it.”


End file.
